I know, there’s a reason they call it hunting and fishing, as opposed to killing and catching. And I certainly wouldn’t expect to come home with my limit every day. But sometimes I feel like Forrest Gump before the hurricane hit when he said, “Shrimping is TOUGH.” Well, grouse hunting is tough too.
Colorado is so beautiful in the fall that I don’t mind taking a walk in the woods with a dog and a gun. And since I eat fish and still have a lot of elk in my freezer, I’m not overly concerned about filling my freezer with grouse. But I do think it’s odd that you might see birds one day in a certain spot on the mountain, and you return to that same spot three days later and don’t see a single bird, unless you count camp robbers and hawks. It snowed a little up high this week so we though conditions would be ideal. When you can see grouse tracks you stand a very good chance of finding birds. And when there is just a little snow on the ground but there is still vegetation sticking through the birds will still forage on the ground. But we went to all our best honey holes and did not see one track. It was quite chilly–26 degrees on the car thermometer–so maybe the birds had sense enough to be curled up in the trees. Or maybe the weekend of elk hunting spooked them to higher ground. Or maybe we were there too early or too late in the day.
I had pheasant black bean soup in the fridge at home, so we called it a day and headed back home. Of course we saw a GIANT turkey on the trip back down, but we already have our Thanksgiving turkey in the freezer. And of course if we had been hunting turkey, there is no WAY we would have seen that bird, but that’s half the fun of it.
We call grouse “dumb” sometimes, because they will just sit on the ground and let you shoot them. So far this season though, it sure seems like the grouse are smarter than I am.